


At her feet

by Hagar



Series: Milk & Blood [1]
Category: Jewish Scripture & Legend, Tanakh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Community: purimgifts, Female Jewish Character, Gen, Medieval Europe, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Blessed among women be Yael, wife of Heber the Kanite, blessed among all women in the tent.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>He asked for water, milk she gave; a lord's dish of butter she offered.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>She put her hand to the stake, and her right to the hammer; and she struck him down, she smote Sisera, smote off his head, stricken and pierced through his temple.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down to sleep: at her feet he bowed, he fell, and where he bowed there he was felled dead."</i></p><p> </p><p> - Judges 5:24-27</p>
            </blockquote>





	At her feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lea_hazel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/gifts).



> Dear Lea,
> 
> This prompt made me so happy, I set to writing it _right away._ Yael is possibly my favorite biblical character ever since I was eight, and this idea is delightful. Thank you so much for the opportunity to play with it!
> 
> Happy Purim,
> 
> The Author

 

 

These city walls are made from wood and mud. They are nothing like the stone walls Yael remembers. These walls would not stop an army, would not slow it down for so much as half a day. Granted, these walls do not need to stop an army - and that which needs to be stopped tonight, even the most towering stone walls would not slow down.

That is what Yael is for.

The King of the World has a sense of humor, and a better understanding of his Children than some think he does. Famously, He picked Eliyahu to act as the Hand of Mercy. The old curmudgeon bitches and whines, and is ill-suited to being kind, but with time the assignment soothes out the wounds that hatred and blood had left in his soul.

Yael is unique in this small society of wandering Jews, the Hands that God selected to care for his Children - their kin - in this strange land of Exile. She is no prophet; she is not one in whose heart His silent voices whisper; she is a man’s wife who had been at the right place at the right time, and who had made the choices that King of the World desired by her own will.

The rain falls down on her where she turns away from the city walls. She threw back her hood and her hair is soaked, but her leather boots leave barely a mark on the sodden ground, where another would be up to his calves in mud.

There are dangers that lurk in the dark. Some of those dangers are men and some are beast; neither of these is her task. Yael has been appointed to deal with those dangers that come to her because she still smells of milk and blood, semen and wine.

The men among the People are made safe by the Brit for all but the first week of their lives; the married women are made safe by the mikve in which they bathe each month, safe but in their time of being nida; but the younger girls, they are at as much risk as the daughters of the Goyim. Worse: some of the demons that lurk in the night will deliberately cast the carcasses of their prey in the Jewish Quarter, frame the People for the demons’ murders.

That is what Yael hunts in this rain. Earlier that night she lifted the body of a torn-throat boy from the alley behind the Rabbi’s house and put it two streets down from where his parents' house. The boy’s blood still sticks to her hands, to her cloak; it will not wash away until she wills it so, and she will not will it so until blood has been paid for with blood.

There are weapons under her cloak, wood and glass and metal. She uses them. Even the prophets of the Land of Israel had need of swords, and she is no prophet and this is not the Land. She has her preferred daggers and stakes, but in her hand any branch picked off the ground will do, for it is her hands that are blessed. Her own weapons in another’s hands will have no power unless she had deliberately gifted them with that purpose. She does that, sometimes.

The Rabbi saw her pick up the broken body of the boy, and the Rabbi keeps a silver dagger that she had used for a while. The mikve supervisor sees her watching the girls and nods at her, and she carries Yael’s stakes in her girdle. The People all know Eliyahu’s name; Yael does not know if hers is spoken. Perhaps it is: those who see her know to not bring her milk or wine, unless she is going on a hunt. Then she takes the wine.

There is a demon here tonight that spills blood, that has a taste for boys and girls. The demons and the monsters know to stay away from the prophets but Yael is no prophet, and they never know her for what she is until it is too late. And she smells of milk and blood, semen and wine, and the demons smell that and come to her willingly.

The demons and the monsters come to her and kneel at her feet, and there where they kneel she strikes them down dead.


End file.
